Toward a Sensible Homeless Policy

Published: February 25, 2000

New York City and advocates for the homeless have been battling for 20 years over policies that govern the housing of the city's most vulnerable men, women and children. The advocates captured the legal high ground in the case of Callahan vs. Carey in 1981, in which the city signed a consent decree conceding that single homeless men had a right to public shelter. This protection was extended to homeless families with children in 1986.

Over the last five years, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has tried to shift the debate from what the city owes the homeless to what the homeless should be required to do in return for shelter. At issue is a proposed rule that would evict homeless people from shelters for failing to meet workfare requirements. Few disagree with the general notion that able-bodied people ought to work. But few would deny shelter to women with children who are clearly incapable of caring for themselves.

The latest warnings were issued this week by Supreme Court Justice Stanley L. Sklar, who barred the city from evicting single adults from shelters, arguing that such a policy would violate the 1981 Callahan decree. The mayor maintains that the decree was rendered moot by new state laws that define shelter as a welfare benefit that can be withdrawn when recipients refuse to work.

But Justice Sklar has a powerful point when he notes the city's tendency to make mistakes: ''The simple bureaucratic error which might send an individual out into the street, because he or she was unable to understand or to cooperate with these requirements, might be the error which results in that individual's death by exposure, death by violence, or death by sheer neglect.''

The mayor has a right to appeal. But a policy that would boot New York's most vulnerable citizens into the street is both inhumane and politically insupportable. What Justice Sklar and others are saying is that the city needs to design a program based less on threats of renewed homelessness and more on methods that have already helped the homeless get back on their feet. Any sensible policy would include not only sanctions but a network of social service supports that teach homeless people the skills they need to live independently.